Page 20 of The Lucky Escape

‘Like I said.’ He grinned. ‘It’s mad. Let me know about a non-date, anyway. It’d be cool to hang out, but no pressure.’

I wanted to find the words to accept it, there and then, but I didn’t feel brave enough. The conversation had taken a turn. I wanted to spend the whole day with him and have him tell me more stories about my eyebrows at camp, and remind me of the late-night rehearsals and talk about thetime he came with Jasmine and me, and another boy, too, whose name I couldn’t remember, out on the lake for a midnight swim, the water deep and cool, the moon lighting up our faces like we were the stars of our own private show.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Yak Yak, andBugsy Malone, and because of all that, Patrick. When I saw him at bootcamp and he made a beeline to talk to me, I planned to ask him outright if he wanted to go out for a drink, or dinner, just to reminisce. When it came down to it, it took bumping into him twice more before I actually did it.

‘I just really want to catch up,’ I explained, feeling ridiculous. ‘Theatre camp, midnight adventures. All of it.’

He replied: ‘Whatever the reason you want me at the same place at the same time as you, on purpose, I’ll be there. It’ll be fun.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Excellent. Tomorrow? Oh no. Wait. It’s Saturday tomorrow. You probably already have weekend plans.’

‘Nope,’ he said, breezily. ‘I’m yours.’

‘Great. Tomorrow afternoon. One platonic old-friend-non-date it is!’ I don’t know what made me say that. I just wanted to be clear. Dating was absolutely not on the agenda. I was dead inside. It just occurred to me that maybe I’d somehow made it sound romantic or loaded with intention. I hadn’t been single in a decade – at university any time spent with a boy would have been considered a potential hook-up. That was all I was going off.

‘One platonic old-friend-non-date indeed,’ he said. ‘Let me give you my phone number?’

‘I don’t have my phone on me, actually.’ I thought of it sitting in the drawer of my bedside table.

‘Give me yours. I’ll text you.’

‘Do you think we could email? My phone is my enemy at the moment.’

‘Email,’ he considered. ‘Absolutely. How very 2002. Very fitting.’

‘I think it’s great,’ Adzo said as we walked back from Pret on her lunch break. I’d met her outside the office, not quite graduating to going in. The house was too empty, too much of a reminder of my aloneness, so I’d grabbed Carol and we’d trekked into town in the September sun, desperate to tell someone about what was happening. ‘It’s the perfect balance of him being somebody who has no idea what’s happened these past few weeks – or the past twenty years – without being a total stranger. He’s a man, so you can remind yourself not all men are trash, but it’s platonic, so you don’t have to wear an uncomfortable bra just to make the old girls look good.’

‘This is an interestingly specific assessment of me simply meeting up with an old friend.’

Adzo took a bite of her falafel wrap. ‘Would we even call him that? An old friend? You didn’t even recognize him when you saw him.’

We loitered outside our work building, but then I worried I’d bump into Chen and so guided us around the corner to a bench.

‘I can’t explain it, but—’

‘You enjoy how he remembers you, and you want to remember that version of yourself too. Yes. I know.’

‘Sorry if I’m repeating myself.’

‘Only be sorry if you’re repeating yourself as a way to excuse wanting to hang out with him. You’re heartbrokenand have been trampled on, and you’re still allowed to feel this …’

‘Pull,’ I supplied. ‘It’s a pull towards him. He’s funny, and light-hearted, and—’

‘And he makes you feel funny and light-hearted too. Yup. It’s all there in the log book for judge and jury to see. All the evidence is accounted for.’

I threw my crusts to the ground for Carol and wiped my fingers on the hem of my dress. ‘You’re a horrible friend.’

‘I am. I’ve made a note of that in the evidence system too. Now gimme a crisp, will you. I should have got a packet myself.’

‘Why do I feel nervous?’ I asked her. She looked at me, and I thought she was going to say something cutting and witty again, but instead she smiled and said, ‘Annie. Chill your beans. He sounds like a good friend to have. Just enjoy it. If Old Annie was all about planning everything down to the very last detail, I definitely think New Annie can afford to be in the moment a bit more, consequences be damned.’

New Annie.I turned the notion of her over in my thoughts, examining the catch. I couldn’t find one. I didwant to be new. Different. All of this had to beforsomething, didn’t it? Isn’t that how people survived things – they gave them meaning?

‘Okay then,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll seize the day.’

I deliberately showed up in my glasses, with my hair unwashed, to avoid any accidental inference about my intentions. I needn’t have worried, because he showed up in a paint-splattered T-shirt after painting and decorating all morning and, I have to say, meeting for an afternoon pintwas very much like something friends would do. We’d settled in to a booth in the corner of the pub, him on one side of the table and me on the other, the street and everyone passing us by on the other side of the glass. The chat had been easy and entertaining, exactly as I’d hoped.

‘Were you there the year we did, urm – oh gosh. The one with the grandparents in bed …’

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